Parable of the Sower

On a second read, I feel a lot differently than I did the first time around. I can't separate uncomfortable feelings of reading about a teenager basically starting a cult and attracting people who are at their absolute most vulnerable to join. It doesn't sit well with me to read about Lauren's glee to "raise babies in Earthseed." And the intense, intense, dehumanization and otherizing of people using drugs, making them into physically unrecognizable monsters, is something I can't get past. If Lauren has hyper-empathy, and is more sensitive to people in need of help, then why does the buck stop with people using drugs?

Imagine a dystopian novel about fleeing the collapse of society and trying to build a new community written from the viewpoint of a brilliant womanist. Talk about a book that is highly relevant for today1

Comparing the art to the Kindred adaption, obviously the artist is the same, but I didn't find it quiet so overwhelming visually. My negative side wonders if this has to do with reading it frame by frame digitally, rather then parsing it page by page physically, but I don't know. My gut says it is a bit more parred down and more pleasing to my eye. Which is obviously super important - not. As the story does revolve around Lauren's religious speculation there is a lot of quotes and excerpts included alongside the art. As always, re-reads and digital comics are both a bit hard for me, but that is a me problem not a book problem. It's a super timely read not only for the actual timeline of the book being in the 2020s but also just because of how prescient it feels. This does fall into my appreciated sub genre of the "hippies" kind of winning, or at least that might does not make right at the end of the world. I feel like the past few months of mutual aid and caremongering has perhaps shown us that humanity can be even more compassionate, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see...?

Gender and race are both pretty central to Lauren's mission with Earthseed. She talks several times about needing to create a diverse community of people. That said, things end up feeling pretty heterosexual.

My biggest complaint is the extreme drug stigmatisation that goes on. I mean, it's not unique to her, but it is unfortunate. Maternal drug use is also the reason why Lauren is disabled and that certainly brings up a lot of bad connotations.

Class is less of a monolith, and all the characters do rough it, but it does feel like there is judgement there. Kind of hard to untangle from the general fear of the outsider that is part of the sub-genre.

A great story about an African American girl who grows up in a small sub community in Pasadena in an American that has fallen apart. A poignant reminder of how thin the veneer of civilization is. Powerful and prophetic for a book written in the early 1990s.

It's set in a post-collapse world, but as it goes along it shows us that there can be different degrees of post-apocalypse when it comes to individuals. The first third shows the main character in the context of her family trying to do everything they can to safeguard their home, and the remainder shows what happens as it ends up failing for them. What saves Lauren is her ability to think for herself and look beyond what was immediately in front of her, though it is abundantly clear that a lot of it is a matter of luck too. By the end, she has assembled a sort of replacement community from people who were once strangers, who all have come to accept her ideas on the reasons for human existence. It becomes a sort of picaresque novel by then as the group encounters different challenges walking the California freeways to a hazily defined destination up north.
Lauren is a Sharer too, experiencing the emotions and feelings of those she sees whether for good or ill. It is almost as if this is a separate aspect of the story, it influences the character's behavior in situations but doesn't really play a fundamental role in driving the plot I think. Maybe if the author were able to write the later volumes in the series this condition would have been more deeply integrated as an element.
This edition of the book includes the first three chapters or so of Parable of the Talents. I expect to finish that book also later this year to find out how this near-future depiction of the US plays out. There has been a lot of talk recently about how prescient Butler was in discussing topics which are currently hot in the real world and I do want to know how far this extends.

Not my most favourite Butler, but very solid. Reminds me a bit of Walking Dead, but the zombies are just people being people. Not quite so many people die though and I couldn't figure out if that felt more or less realistic lol.

The biggest drawback for me mostly came from the depiction of drugs. My feelings about how one should depict drugs is still very nebulous, so I'm not really sure about how they are depicted here but it did feel a tad bit regressive to me personally.

Since we all know that our heroine will end up on the outside sooner rather than later, I do feel like the opening could have been a bit more condensed.